May 8, 2006

How to Get Past The Mid-Day Slump

If you’ve ever heard the term “circadian rhythm,” you may already be familiar with the internal clock your body uses to regulate your energy levels during the day. It begins rising from the time you wake up and greet the sun until the time you get ready for bed … except for this big pothole of lethargy smack in the middle of the day. You know it as the mid-day slump.

It’s the time people go for coffee breaks, or grab a soda, or just start to zone out. If that’s happening to you, you need to take action to pull yourself out of the slump. You don’t want to go for coffee or soda, because you’ll just get a brief caffeine or sugar boost that you’ll crash from before too long. But you don’t want to just grab a junky snack either. That candy bar might give you a short boost, but you’ll get the same crash afterwards.

Ultimately, you want to be the one in control of keeping your energy level high, and you don’t want to use crutches like sugar and caffeine to do it. The good news is that you don’t need them. Instead, you can use three strategies to counterbalance that mid-day slump.

#1 – Keeping your blood sugar level fairly constant.
When you eat food, your body converts it into glycogen, which ends up getting stored in your liver like gas in a gas tank. If you don’t eat something for a while, the glycogen in your liver is going to run out and as your blood sugar drops, you’ll feel that slump come on. You’re out of gas. And if you’re one of those people who doesn’t eat breakfast, that slump is going to be even more severe.

What you want to do is make sure you keep your blood sugar level from dipping during the day. An easy way to do this is to make sure that you don’t go more than about three hours without having something good to eat – basically a half-time snack between each of the three main meals – breakfast lunch or dinner.

But not all snacks are created equal. Sugary foods and drinks are definitely out. But you also have to avoid highly processed foods like crackers, white breads and bagels, as their energy is metabolized too rapidly. Since they get converted to sugar quickly you’ll get that big burst that fizzles out, just as you would with a can of soda. You don’t want that.

What you want is a snack that will digest more slowly and give you a steady stream of energy. I’m talking fruit, nuts, yogurt, bran cereals, milk, as well as a lot of other foods. Rather than go into a big list of them right now, I’d suggest you do an internet search for the words “foods with low glycemic index” and you’ll get a lot of good leads.

The important thing here is consistency. Between breakfast and dinner, don’t let more than three hours go without getting some good food in your stomach. This will help reduce the effect of the slump in the first place.

#2 – Start drinking more water. Plenty more.
The other thing that will help you beat that slump is – you guessed it – water. The more hydrated you are, the less the slump affects you. So make sure you’re very hydrated, especially during this part of the day.

There’s not much more to be said about this one. A lot people hate to do it, but there’s no way around it. I’m not too thrilled about maintaining the fluids in my car’s engine, but I can’t avoid the impact I’ll face if I don’t. So no matter what, don’t let this one slip.

#3 – Shake it off – literally.
When that dreaded energy slump hits (and it will), you have to take immediate and full-out action to break it’s hold on you. There are a lot of ways you can try and shake it off, but I want you to really focus on the one that’s the most effective – walking and talking. It may sound a bit silly, but bear with me.

The number one way to shake off the slump when it hits is to get your heart pumping – to get moving. Get up out of your chair and take a 5-10 minute brisk walk, or walk up and down the stairs a few times if your workplace has a staircase. (To really get your heart rate up, walk them two at a time – the burn hits you fast). This has two benefits – first it breaks you away from whatever you’re focusing on, which is a relief, and second, it gets your heart pumping, which will definitely help your energy levels.

But walking alone often isn’t enough (usually because we’re internalizing complaints about the process!). You’ve got to do a little bit of talking to yourself as well. You see, a lot of the time we hit that slump it’s in part because we’re really not excited about whatever it is we’re doing at the time. That boredom amplifies the power of the slump, because we’re choosing to focus on something that just doesn’t excite us. So you’ve got to spend a few minutes as you walk thinking about what you can get excited about.

There’s got to be something. Maybe you’re working on a project where you have the opportunity to really look good in front of your boss. Maybe you can get excited about pushing yourself to have more self-discipline today than you had yesterday. Maybe you should just focus on being grateful to have a job, or to have a family you’re helping to nurture, if you stay at home. Everybody gets excited by different things, so you’ve got to figure out what works for you.

Now chances are, you may come to the slump thinking there’s nothing in the world that excites you at that particular moment. The thing is, that’s just not true. There’s something – you just have to dig for it. And this is a hard thing for a lot of people, because we’ve convinced ourselves that our mood is at the mercy of the environment and circumstances around us. Bit it’s not. You can totally get yourself in a great state if you truly focus on the good things in your life at that moment, and what you can do right then to make it even better.

So when you’re walking, if you feel that you don’t have anything to energize you, all I can say is you have to dig deeper. Don’t let yourself be held back by the misleading thought that you have to live in the slump. There’s something you can appreciate about your life, something you may just be taking for granted right now. Focus on being grateful, focus on being excited about whatever opportunity you have in the current situation – and believe me, there is one, even if you can’t see it at first – focus on that and you’ll pull yourself out of the slump.

This is a really important skill to master, because 50% of your slump has to do with your mental focus. You can run a marathon to get your blood pumping, but if you’re not supporting the mental side of this you’re going to be trapped in the power of the slump.

So that’s the focus you should have to defeat the mid-day slump. The first step is eating intelligently, so you minimize the slump in the first place. The second step is doing the walking and talking – get moving and support yourself with thoughts that empower you. That one-two punch will help enormously, but only if you really give it 100% when you try it.

Now, looking back at this, sure I could have given you a dozen little tips on how to shake off the slump, but I believe – and I think you’ll agree – that it’s really more important to focus on the cause of the problem than on the symptoms.

So get out your worksheets and make a plan for how you’re going to launch a pre-emptive strike against the mid day slump and banish it forever. Go to it and do it now. You’ll thank yourself for it.

Give it a try today & see what you think! You’ll thank yourself for it.